Examples of how patriarchal conditioning plays into this problem:

- pop cultural messaging across the decades like "real men don't cry"

- the general way that boys and men have often been shamed for expressing emotional sensitivity/vulnerability

- generations also of the "tough guy" action hero archetype, whose aggression and risk-taking are prized above most other qualities and/or whose "cool" is portrayed as general emotional detachment. (E.g., decades upon decades of James Bond being a womanizer rather than forming genuine emotional attachments with his conquests — and of him being "rewarded" for that kind of attitude by the fact that the female characters were written to fall all over him in response.)

Those are a couple examples off the top of my head… but if you were shielded from all of this patriarchal nonsense and were raised to embrace your vulnerability, Jens, then that's awesome!

On a side note, funny enough, you’re the second guy here who wanted to talk about girls/women who swoon over aloofness. The fact remains that aloofness — and DESIRING aloofness — is unhealthy. People who actively seek out emotionally unavailable partners tend to have self-esteem and/or codependency issues. Their attraction to such a trait is often an outgrowth of the fear that they need to “prove” themselves by aiming for the “difficult” partner. So if a woman responds enthusiastically to a man's masking of his true self, that's a bad sign about her readiness for an actual healthy partnership and about her general emotional health.

In other words: if you're on the market, I'd highly recommend NOT trying to attract that demographic of women.